Saturday, January 24, 2009

There is a new download available for Realeyes v0.9.4. Read the release notes for details, but basically there are several fixes and a few new features.

Unfortunately, while testing the packages, I discovered that the previous release had a ridiculous error that caused the system to fail if only IPv4 or IPv6 were chosen to be monitored. My lame excuse for this is that I made some significant changes to the database and spent a lot of time testing those. When I modified the install script to allow for alternate combinations of IPv4 and IPv6, I 'assumed' that the original case would work.

Another problem I discovered is that between the last release (Sept. 2008) and now, the eclipse project archived the version of the SWT libraries I was pointing to from the installation instructions and the Microsoft Windows installer. So that has been corrected, and hopefully won't change again.

Essentially it comes down to people and their (my) limitations. I was planning to add a page to the project web site to encourage developers, but I made it a priority after finding that embarrassing glitch.

I am very pleased to announce that I have created several demos of the application. The main links go to youtube, but there are ogg theora versions available also. And, if anything, these are better than those at youtube. Assuming you have the mplayer plugin installed in your browser, you should get a video that fills the window, which makes it much easier to see than the little viewer on the youtube page.

The demos were created using the GTK version of recordMyDesktop. This is a simple application, but it does what it is supposed to very well. The only technical issue I had was that the output file name needs to be set before the recording.

The biggest problem I had was in my performance. I wrote outlines for the demos, but discovered that even just moving the cursor around, much less opening and closing windows, caused me to lose track of what I was saying. So I eventually wrote out scripts which I nearly read word-for-word. And even at that, there are noticeable pauses in a couple of places. If possible, I recommend that 2 people work together, one talking, the other manipulating the screen.

Anyhow, I hope these demos give people an idea of the power of this system. I am finding quite a bit that is interesting at the college where I am running a pilot project. I will be writing about that soon.